Chapter 18 #2
Devon allowed a frigid pause to develop. When he finally spoke, his voice was light and full of ice. “Every time I saw her, I reduced my demands so as to help her comply. It became almost comical.”
“It shouldn’t have, because the real comedy is that the relationship you were so sure she had with Granville was never more than a third of the reason you kept her.
” Cat stepped back, the sharp movement swinging his shoulders, and the braid fell from its loop around his neck.
“You won’t let her go because you want her.
Even in that bloody tavern I saw it. It’s a disease with you.
You walk into a room with Merry, and you take in so much hydrogen that it’s a miracle you don’t float.
But she’s young and sensitive and well-bred, and that sets your chivalrous conceits flowing like springtime sap.
You could have taken her; except that it was easier for your genteel conscience to deny yourself the cure of her body, even if that meant you weren’t able to open the knot.
An honest man would have raped her at once and let her go. ”
Devon had retreated a step, though Cat wasn’t sure if it was in anger or to look at him from a fuller angle.
“Are you mad at me,” Devon said slowly, “because I want to take her to bed, or because I haven’t?”
“I’m mad at you because you’ve kept her a prisoner while you made up your mind whether your lust was more important to you than your bloody vanity. It would have been better to have ravished her and released her than to keep her living all those weeks in air turrets.”
The shining oval leaf had dropped from Cat’s fingers.
Leaning forward gracefully from the waist, Devon swept it up and stood staring at the glossy cuticle, as though the bright color fascinated him, playing one slow finger along the vein paths.
Looking again toward Cat, he said, “Why do you assume that I could have done either thing?” And then, “You don’t know me as well as you think you do. ”
“Really?” The reply was heavily sarcastic. “Then you may have made yourself unnecessarily elaborate. What will become of your moral dilemmas when she’s dead?”
Cat stopped, and though Devon couldn’t feel the change in his own expression, he saw Cat shut his eyes tightly against it and cover his eyes and forehead with a long hand that was pitifully adolescent, thin and prominently boned.
Swiftly turning, Cat tried to walk away but discovered that his leg muscles weren’t functioning properly.
The first shock of the discovery was so intense he might almost have confused it with illness.
Almost. Practical to the end, he decided to sink to his knees, catching himself on an outstretched hand as he fell.
He knelt, fighting a blasting wave of nausea.
It was minutes later, as it subsided, that he became aware of Devon’s arm supporting his shoulders, the touch pressureless, infinite in its ability to warm and reassure.
Cat murmured, “I’m sorry. Honestly. I’m not sure how much of it I meant.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Devon said.
When Cat turned toward him, he found that Devon was looking at him with an unpolished kindness strain left undimmed. It occurred to Cat that he had never seen Devon look so tired.
Exhaustion made Devon slightly misread Cat’s expression. Devon said, “I apologize for dropping off sitting up. I should have been there with you when Morgan conducted his little drama.”
“No. He picked a time when you weren’t there.
You know Morgan’s methods. Divide and slaughter.
” Cat studied Devon’s face. Through everything the man had asked nothing for himself, not sympathy, not tact, not even sleep.
This was not the first time Cat had noticed how unselfish Devon was in his friendships, and if anyone thought differently, it was an illusion created by the strength of the impression Devon left on people.
He felt Devon pat his shoulder and withdraw his arm.
Wishing he was at ease enough with physical contact to have returned the light clasp, Cat gave him a glance that was as free from pain as he could make it and with the back of his fingers flipped the soft blond hair on Devon’s forehead.
“You need a haircut,” he said. It was an old joke between them. No one could remember the original context, but it seemed to have had something to do with Cat’s hair being much longer. Then, losing the last of his inhibitions about appearing pathetic, he said, “Please. Help me keep her alive.”
Devon had settled cross-legged in the deep grass, twirling the leaf between two fingers.
“You can depend upon it, child.” He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his palms, as though he was clearing his brain, and as he lowered his hands he said, “You may not have any particular faith in the healing power of guilt, but I promise you that the heat of mine is going to keep Merry alive until she’s at least three hundred.
And she’s more to me too than one more warm…
” He lost interest in the sentence, searching in his pocket and then producing a piece of notepaper. He handed it to Cat.
“Tell me about this,” he said.
Cat glanced at the paper. It was covered with his own handwriting, the neat slanting letters that had always seemed like they must come from a hand other than his own.
“Where did you get this?” Cat asked, as if he didn’t know already.
“It was beside me when Annie woke me. Morgan left it, one assumes. I can’t think of anyone else who would take the liberty of rifling your journal. What is it?”
Reluctantly Cat said, “An Indian remedy. I don’t know how to use it.”
“Have you tried?”
“Yesterday. Do you remember when Griffith kept Raven busy on the Joke making new rope handles for the fire buckets? Middle of the afternoon? I made up a dose, and Saunders fed it to one of the dogs.” Cat was looking away from Devon, down the rolling meadow where a cotton tree sparrow trilled a scale that rose and fell sweetly.
The boy felt the older man’s scrutiny, and then a shallow relief as that scrutiny was withdrawn, an assessment complete.
“It died?” Devon said.
“I don’t know if it would have died,” Cat said. Inhibitions, irritation, and frustration were back in place, thank God, and he was able to keep the sticky misery out of his voice as he finished. “Saunders had to shoot it.”
Devon made a murmur in his throat of muted sympathy as he tunneled his spread fingers thoughtfully through the grass before his knees.
“Too strong, then. It’s a poison. We can dilute it.”
“For God’s sake, do you think I haven’t thought of that?” Cat said. “Dilute it how much? And even then, how would I know if it’s safe for Merry?”
On their trip through the fragrant shaded grass Devon’s fingers encountered a young scorpion, and he let it walk onto his barely cupped palm.
Cat’s stomach muscles tightened involuntarily, even though he knew the small arachnid’s sting was no worse than a severe wasp bite.
He kept his lips stubbornly shut, and in a minute Devon gently released the scorpion and watched it slip away on its belly.
Devon smiled. “The Indians were right about quina.”
“Look—”
“We’ll work out a less potent formula, and give it to me first. Yes?”
“No!” The skin on Cat’s cheekbones whitened and stretched like thin fabric. “Oh, no. Don’t ask.”
But Devon was already getting to his feet. “Assent with a civil leer, young’un. Do you think I’d let you kill me? It would be unspeakable to leave you alone to explain it to Morgan—”
“Not to mention packing you in a Malmsey butt and sending you home to Mother.” Taking refuge in anger, Cat said, “Try not to posture, will you? I’ve got grief enough without having to depopulate half the island.
I won’t give it to you. You wouldn’t be a fair test anyway.
The body isn’t a base metal vat that you can dump what have you into.
Chemicals react against each other, and since you aren’t full of arsenic like she is—”
“Give me that too.”
“Wonderful! Instead of sending you home, maybe you’d like us to bury you beside the dog. What’s the matter with you? I remember a time not long ago when you were sane. Will poisoning you help her?”
“That, my friend, is what we’re going to find out.”
In the end Devon won, probably because, as Cat would reflect later, when it came to relentless expertise in getting his own way, Devon was rarely outdistanced.
Cat gave him the questionable medicinal concoction, and when Devon was alive an hour later—though not in what anyone would call a healthy condition—Cat diluted the mixture by another two thirds and fed it to Merry.